


Three Christmases with the Halladays

by osprey_archer



Category: Frances Ha (2012)
Genre: F/F
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-12-25
Updated: 2013-12-25
Packaged: 2018-01-06 00:38:49
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,737
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1100405
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/osprey_archer/pseuds/osprey_archer
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <i>"I just, I, uh, I kind of thought we were dating,” Frances said.  </i>
</p><p>  <i>Sophie stared at her. Frances picked at a pimple on her chin. “Because of that time at the party?” Frances said. “When you wouldn’t kiss me.” </i></p><p>  <i>“You thought we were dating because I <i>wouldn’t</i> kiss you.”</i></p><p>Three times Sophie spent Christmas with the Halladays.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Three Christmases with the Halladays

**Author's Note:**

  * For [littlerhymes](https://archiveofourown.org/users/littlerhymes/gifts).



Christmas #1

By the third day of Sophie’s visit, she decided that Frances’s family explained a lot about Frances. Sophie had never met a group of people more welcoming, more awkward, more earnestly intent on feeding her fruitcake, or more inept at their attempts to herd Frances and Sophie together under a sprig of fake mistletoe. 

After the third fake mistletoe incident, Sophie figured it out. “Frances,” said Sophie, when they finally had a few moments alone together in Frances’s room. But then she stopped. She didn’t know quite what to say next. 

Frances lay on the floor, her arms and legs stretched out, like she meant to make a snow angel in her carpet. She pressed her hands to the carpet and arched herself into a bridge, looking at Sophie upside down. Sophie, sitting on Frances’s bed, rolled over so she lay with her head hanging off the side, so they both looked at each other upside down. 

Somehow, upside down, it was easier to keep talking. “I think your family thinks we’re dating,” said Sophie. “It’s kind of hilarious.” 

Frances fell out of her pose. Sophie rolled over, stomach down on the bed. “Do you think we should tell them the truth?” Sophie asked. 

Frances picked at the pimple that had sprouted on her chin. “That we’re not dating,” she said. 

“Well, yeah,” said Sophie. “Because...we’re not dating. Right?” 

“Right. Right. We’re not dating,” Frances said. She screwed up her face. “You want to make a big announcement?” 

“That might kind of awkward,” Sophie said. 

“Maybe I could tell them through interpretive dance?” 

“That will be way less awkward,” Sophie agreed. “Because they’ll have no idea what you’re trying to say.” 

Frances lunged at her, grabbing her pillow and whacking Sophie with it. Sophie shrieked, rolling around the bed and hurling beanie babies at Frances, trying to avoid the flailing pillow. “That’s why they - call it - interpretive dance - because the viewers have to - ” 

The pillow caught the side of her head, almost knocking her glasses off. Sophie rolled off the bed. Frances threw herself down next to Sophie, tickling her sides. “Okay, okay!” Sophie cried, giggling and trying to bat Frances’s hands away. “Interpretive dance. I respect it. I respect it!”

Frances flung herself down on the carpet beside Sophie, giggling also. Sophie had almost stopped laughing, but then she glanced at Frances, and they both burst into giggles again. 

 

Christmas #2

Right before the winter holidays, Sophie broke up with her boyfriend. Over the phone, Sophie’s parents sympathized with her until she hung up, screamed, and washed all their dirty dishes in such a frenzy that she broke a plate. 

Frances handed her a cup of tea. “Want to spend Christmas at my house again?” 

They decorated the tree. The Halladays had an ornament Frances had made as a preschooler by sticking her foot in plaster of Paris. Somehow Frances had messed it up, though: the impression had seven toes. 

“She couldn’t decide how she wanted to put her foot down,” Frances’s mother said. “So she did it twice.” 

“A dancer even then,” said Frances’s father, and put an arm around Frances’s shoulder to kiss the top of her head. 

They dug out Frances’s father’s old banjo. Sophie learned how to play simple Christmas carols - well, “Jingle Bells,” mostly - and they set up on a street corner, where Sophie played and Frances danced until the police asked them to leave. 

Sophie finally tried the fruitcake. They had soaked it with half a bottle of madeira, and to Sophie’s surprise, it was delicious. Especially when she and Frances ate it with half a pitcher of eggnog to wash it down. 

Afterward, they lay with their heads under the tree, watching the Christmas ornaments sparkle in the Christmas lights. “You feel better?” Frances asked.

The sparkles mesmerized Sophie. It took a lot of effort to roll her head to the side to look at Frances. “Better?” she echoed. 

Frances turned her head too, so they were facing each other. “About Steve,” Frances said. Sophie could smell the eggnog on her breath. 

“Oh. Him.” And Sophie realized that she’d forgotten to think of her ex at all. 

She leaned her forehead against Frances’s, a little harder than she intended, because their heads knocked together. “Who needs him when I’ve got you?” 

 

Christmas #3

“I saw that same-sex marriage got legalized in New York,” said one of Frances’s many aunts, the bell on her Santa hat jingling as she leaned in to talk to Sophie. She almost shouted, but Sophie could barely hear her over the din of the Halladays. The children had all gathered around Frances, who was trying to crack walnuts using a big ornamental nutcracker. “You girls must be so pleased!” 

Sophie, engrossed in Frances’s nutcracker escapades, glanced at the aunt politely. “Yeah, of course,” she said. 

“So when will we be hearing wedding bells?” the aunt said. “You and Frances make such a cute couple!” 

Sophie turned to stare. Then she whipped around again at a sudden sharp crack. “Shit!” said Frances, cradling a hand against her chest. The nutcracker lay at her feet, a whole walnut clenched between its cracked jaw. “Fuck!” said Frances, and stuck a finger in her mouth.

“Come on,” said Sophie, and she grabbed Frances’s uninjured arm and led her out of the room.

Frances sat down on her bed. She took her finger out of her mouth and inspected it: not bleeding, just bruised. “Mom and Dad got me that nutcracker the first year I started ballet,” she said. “I was one of Mother Ginger’s children that year. I never did get to play Clara…” Suddenly she smiled dreamily. “But now I’ve broken the nutcracker, just like Clara does. Do you feel up to playing the Mouse King tonight?” 

“Why does your aunt still think we’re dating?” Sophie asked. 

Frances studied her bruised finger with renewed fixity. She stuck it back in her mouth. She mumbled, “I may have told them we were dating.”

“Frances! _Why_? I’m dating Patch!” 

“You weren’t when I told them!”

Sophie sat down next to Frances on the bed. “I’ve been dating Patch for like three years,” she said.

“Yeah, but you barely even like him anyway,” Frances said. 

“Yeah, but I’m dating him,” Sophie said. “Didn’t you tell them that? Yes, you have! I walked in that one time when you were complaining to your parents on the phone about my - ”

“That was your fault, you should have knocked - ”

“ - terrible taste in men, and we _never_ knock, Frances - ”

“Why are you dating him, anyway? He always says the same few things, and I know how much you care about people being funny, and interesting, and you always look for that in books at Random House - ”

“But that’s books, Frances, this is life, and - you’re changing the subject. Why did you tell them _we_ were dating?” 

“It was a long time ago, the first time you came to Christmas - that’s normally who you invite to Christmas, people you’re dating. I just, I, uh, I kind of thought we were dating.” 

Sophie stared at her. Frances picked at a pimple on her chin. “Because of that time at the party?” Frances said. “When you wouldn’t kiss me.” 

“You thought we were dating because I _wouldn’t_ kiss you.” Even for Frances-logic, this was a little strange. 

“No, it wasn’t because you wouldn’t kiss me. It was - are you sure you don’t remember this? You were pretty drunk…”

Sophie had been pretty drunk at a lot of parties. But suddenly a hazy dark memory, studded with glowing colored orbs that must have been Christmas lights, began to coalesce in her mind. “Oh…”

“You wouldn’t make out with me at the party, even though that guy I really liked was there - what was his name? The one with the really stupid leather jacket. And after we left I asked you why, and you said that you wanted our first kiss to be about us, not about impressing guys, and then…”

Sophie’s face was flaming. She fell back on Frances’s bed, covering her eyes with her forearm, so she didn’t have to look at Frances. 

“You kissed me. Under the evergreen arbor they set up in the arboretum. And all the trees had colored Christmas lights, which glowed through the snow covering them. And then I ran away into the fresh snow and danced, and you grabbed onto the other end of my scarf and danced with me, except you’re a terrible dancer, Soph.”

“I was very drunk,” Sophie said. 

“You’re a terrible dancer even when you’re not drunk. No offense.” 

“No, that wasn’t what…” Sophie checked herself. “I’m not _that_ bad at dancing,” she said, instead, lifting her arm to look at Frances. 

“You’re like a tragic little dancing frog,” said Frances. She hopped off the bed and leapfrogged across the room, glancing back over her shoulder to see if Sophie was laughing. 

She did laugh, but she felt oddly angry, too. “I don’t dance like that,” she protested, sitting up. “My dancing is fine. That wasn’t what I meant, anyway. I said all that because I was drunk.” 

“No, I know,” Frances said. 

“And it made sense, anyway. Because of course guys would want us to make out,” Sophie said. “Two super-hot girls who are best friends, of course they were going to ask. And I didn’t...I wanted…” She felt her face getting hot again. She lifted her hand, covering her mouth. Frances was nodding, listening so hard that she frowned with thoughtfulness, and Sophie didn’t know what she wanted to say. “I didn’t want us to be...I didn’t want us to use each other like that. Because we mean more than that.” 

“Yes,” said Frances. “We do.” 

They looked at each other across the room: Frances still crouched frog-like on the floor, and Sophie sitting with her hands clenched in Frances’s bedspread. Sophie couldn’t look away. But she didn’t know what else to say. 

“Sophie! Fran!” Frances’s mother called. They both turned toward her voice. “We’re just about ready to light the Christmas pudding on fire!” 

Sophie and Frances looked at each other. “Well, we can’t miss _that_ ,” said Frances. They descended back into the din of the Halladays and left the conversation behind; and no matter how much eggnog she drank, Sophie could not quite bring herself to start it again.


End file.
